Access / Office 2007 - Menus

[prakashwadhwani]

Office 2007 & thus Access has had it's menus replaced with the Ribbon
Bar. It's very disconcerting. In Word, Excel, Access, I feel totally
lost. Also all the shortcut Menu pulldowns don't work anymore ...

eg

Alt F-S to save a file
Alt F-U for Page Setup in Word/Excel

etc. etc.
What I'd like to know is, how have you'll managed with the new Office
2007 series product without menus ... (i.e. those that have migrated).
I remember reading somewhere that a Menu Add-On is available by a 3rd
party product which provides menus for Office 2007 just like Office
2003 & it's previous versions. Is that a stable product ? Should I be
using the 3rd party menu add-on or force myself to get acquainted with
the new Ribbon Bar System ? And then what about the shortcut keys ?
How do I get that functionality back ? I hate doing the mouse-
keyboard dance !

Best Rgds,
Prakash.

[Wayne]

On May 19, 4:38*pm, [e-mail] wrote:

Office 2007 & thus Access has had it's menus replaced with the Ribbon
Bar. It's very disconcerting. In Word, Excel, Access, I feel totally
lost. Also all the shortcut Menu pulldowns don't work anymore ...

eg

Alt F-S *to save a file
Alt F-U for Page Setup in Word/Excel

etc. etc.

What I'd like to know is, how have you'll managed with the new Office
2007 series product without menus ... (i.e. those that have migrated).
I remember reading somewhere that a Menu Add-On is available by a 3rd
party product which provides menus for Office 2007 just like Office
2003 & it's previous versions. Is that a stable product ? *Should I be
using the 3rd party menu add-on or force myself to get acquainted with
the new Ribbon Bar System ? *And then what about the shortcut keys ?
How do I get that functionality back ? *I hate doing the mouse-
keyboard dance !

Best Rgds,
Prakash.

AddInTools is available as a trial from here:
http://www.addintools.com/english/me...FSQdagod7U8dow

Personally I think you are just better off learning the new interface.
It doesn't take that long. IMHO the Ribbon is the least of Access
2007's problems.

I find the sluggishness of A2007 compared to A2003 to be the biggest
annoyance, followed closely by the fact that there's no option to not
have the Navigation Pane "always on top" in design view. This means
if you are designing forms that are almost full screen width, you are
constantly minimizing and maximizing the navigation pane or moving the
position of the form, or both. They couldn't have made it more
annoying if they had tried.

A simple option to either have the Navigation Pane "always on top" or
not always on top would have gotten rid of this annoyance. Perhaps
we'll see it in a service pack, but I'm not holding my breath. I've
never seen anyone else post that they find this annoying. Perhaps I'm
the only one. :-)

[Tom van Stiphout]

On Mon, 19 May 2008 00:16:00 -0700 (PDT), Wayne
<cq*******@volcanomail.comwrote:

Try switching to a higher screen resolution, so the form isn't almost
full size anymore.
Or adopt a design like A2007 Northwind, where most forms run
maximized.

-Tom.

<Clip>

>
I find the sluggishness of A2007 compared to A2003 to be the biggest
annoyance, followed closely by the fact that there's no option to not
have the Navigation Pane "always on top" in design view. This means
if you are designing forms that are almost full screen width, you are
constantly minimizing and maximizing the navigation pane or moving the
position of the form, or both. They couldn't have made it more
annoying if they had tried.

A simple option to either have the Navigation Pane "always on top" or
not always on top would have gotten rid of this annoyance. Perhaps
we'll see it in a service pack, but I'm not holding my breath. I've
never seen anyone else post that they find this annoying. Perhaps I'm
the only one. :-)

[ARC]

When I migrated to Acc2007 I went to a new pc with vista and a dual-core, so
I don't notice sluggishness. Also I moved up to a widescreen display, so the
nav bar has never bothered me, as development mode is plenty wide.

And Prakash, in your Access 2003 vs. 2007 post, I posted with 2 links for
learning the ribbon, which I found to be quite helpful. If you're going with
the more modern version of access, I'm with Wayne, you definitely want to
put the time in to learn the ribbons. It's not hard, and if you're stuck,
just post here. Remember to turn on the option to "show add-in user
interface errors", under the access options, advanced section. Otherwise
you'll go nuts trying to find out why your custom ribbon is not displaying
when there's an error.

Andy
"Wayne" <cq*******@volcanomail.comwrote in message
news:d9**********************************@h1g2000p rh.googlegroups.com...
On May 19, 4:38 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

Office 2007 & thus Access has had it's menus replaced with the Ribbon
Bar. It's very disconcerting. In Word, Excel, Access, I feel totally
lost. Also all the shortcut Menu pulldowns don't work anymore ...

eg

Alt F-S to save a file
Alt F-U for Page Setup in Word/Excel

etc. etc.

What I'd like to know is, how have you'll managed with the new Office
2007 series product without menus ... (i.e. those that have migrated).
I remember reading somewhere that a Menu Add-On is available by a 3rd
party product which provides menus for Office 2007 just like Office
2003 & it's previous versions. Is that a stable product ? Should I be
using the 3rd party menu add-on or force myself to get acquainted with
the new Ribbon Bar System ? And then what about the shortcut keys ?
How do I get that functionality back ? I hate doing the mouse-
keyboard dance !

Best Rgds,
Prakash.

AddInTools is available as a trial from here:
http://www.addintools.com/english/me...FSQdagod7U8dow

Personally I think you are just better off learning the new interface.
It doesn't take that long. IMHO the Ribbon is the least of Access
2007's problems.

I find the sluggishness of A2007 compared to A2003 to be the biggest
annoyance, followed closely by the fact that there's no option to not
have the Navigation Pane "always on top" in design view. This means
if you are designing forms that are almost full screen width, you are
constantly minimizing and maximizing the navigation pane or moving the
position of the form, or both. They couldn't have made it more
annoying if they had tried.

A simple option to either have the Navigation Pane "always on top" or
not always on top would have gotten rid of this annoyance. Perhaps
we'll see it in a service pack, but I'm not holding my breath. I've
never seen anyone else post that they find this annoying. Perhaps I'm
the only one. :-)

[Wayne]

On May 20, 12:05*am, Tom van Stiphout <[e-mail]:

On Mon, 19 May 2008 00:16:00 -0700 (PDT), Wayne

<[e-mail]:

Try switching to a higher screen resolution, so the form isn't almost
full size anymore.
Or adopt a design like A2007 Northwind, where most forms run
maximized.

-Tom.

I'm using a 19" 1280x1024 now, but I guess a widescreen is the answer.

[Wayne]

On May 20, 1:34*am, "ARC" <[e-mail]:

When I migrated to Acc2007 I went to a new pc with vista and a dual-core, so
I don't notice sluggishness. Also I moved up to a widescreen display, so the
nav bar has never bothered me, as development mode is plenty wide.

And Prakash, in your Access 2003 vs. 2007 post, I posted with 2 links for
learning the ribbon, which I found to be quite helpful. If you're going with
the more modern version of access, I'm with Wayne, you definitely want to
put the time in to learn the ribbons. It's not hard, and if you're stuck,
just post here. Remember to turn on the option to "show add-in user
interface errors", under the access options, advanced section. Otherwise
you'll go nuts trying to find out why your custom ribbon is not displaying
when there's an error.

I'm using a dual core with 2 gigs of ram, but I still find A2007 to be
slow compared to A2003. There is plenty of comment on the web that
Office 2007 is generally slower, especially Excel and this has been my
experience. I'm expecting my new 2.5gig dual core laptop with 4 gigs
of ram any day now. It will be interesting to see how Office 2007
performs on it. And yes, a widescreen sounds like a good option.

[Larry Linson]

"Tom van Stiphout" <no*************@cox.netwrote in message
news:55********************************@4ax.com...

On Mon, 19 May 2008 00:16:00 -0700 (PDT), Wayne
<cq*******@volcanomail.comwrote:

Try switching to a higher screen resolution, so the form isn't almost
full size anymore.
Or adopt a design like A2007 Northwind, where most forms run
maximized.

How soon they forget in Redmond! The "Windows Way" is to let the user have
control over his/her own desktop. Databases where someone decides they know
better than I do how my desktop should look irritates me significantly, even
if they are from Redmond, covering their
not-nearly-as-wonderful-for-Access-as-for-Word new user interface. It's
true that Word's UI was a mess, cluttered, and needed rework; it's not true
that the entire UI redesign should have been left up to someone who
obviously had spent far-too-little time working with Excel and Access.

Just about the quickest way to get me to (1) break in and revise an Access
application so it doesn't drive me to distraction, or (2) reject it and find
another application to serve the same purpose is to take over my desktop,
run forms maximized or resize them to the author's "ideal size" at every
possible opportunity.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP

[Tom van Stiphout]

On Mon, 19 May 2008 13:40:14 -0700 (PDT), Wayne
<cq*******@volcanomail.comwrote:

That's surprising that you develop applications with forms at almost
1280*1024: do all of your users have the displays and video cards to
support that?

-Tom.

>On May 20, 12:05*am, Tom van Stiphout <[e-mail]:

>On Mon, 19 May 2008 00:16:00 -0700 (PDT), Wayne

<[e-mail]:

Try switching to a higher screen resolution, so the form isn't almost
full size anymore.
Or adopt a design like A2007 Northwind, where most forms run
maximized.

-Tom.

I'm using a 19" 1280x1024 now, but I guess a widescreen is the answer.

[Tom van Stiphout]

On Mon, 19 May 2008 21:50:54 GMT, "Larry Linson"
<bo*****@localhost.notwrote:

I'm not a fan of maximized either, but you probably would agree that
with the new tabbed interface it's not as much a problem anymore as it
used to be.

-Tom.

>
"Tom van Stiphout" <no*************@cox.netwrote in message
news:55********************************@4ax.com.. .

>On Mon, 19 May 2008 00:16:00 -0700 (PDT), Wayne
<cq*******@volcanomail.comwrote:

Try switching to a higher screen resolution, so the form isn't almost
full size anymore.
Or adopt a design like A2007 Northwind, where most forms run
maximized.

How soon they forget in Redmond! The "Windows Way" is to let the user have
control over his/her own desktop. Databases where someone decides they know
better than I do how my desktop should look irritates me significantly, even
if they are from Redmond, covering their
not-nearly-as-wonderful-for-Access-as-for-Word new user interface. It's
true that Word's UI was a mess, cluttered, and needed rework; it's not true
that the entire UI redesign should have been left up to someone who
obviously had spent far-too-little time working with Excel and Access.

Just about the quickest way to get me to (1) break in and revise an Access
application so it doesn't drive me to distraction, or (2) reject it and find
another application to serve the same purpose is to take over my desktop,
run forms maximized or resize them to the author's "ideal size" at every
possible opportunity.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP

[Wayne]

On May 20, 2:06*pm, Tom van Stiphout <[e-mail]:

That's surprising that you develop applications with forms at almost
1280*1024: do all of your users have the displays and video cards to
support that?

-Tom.

Tom, I'm surprised that you find that surprising! With the way that
LCD display prices continue to fall 19 inch 1280 x 1024 screens aren't
what I see as being upmarket any more. All my users have at least 17
inch displays with 1024 x 768 resolution which is what I usually
develop for.

Others ask specifically if I can develop for 1280 x 1024. I've been
looking at some screens online today and a reasonable quality Samsung
22 inch 1680 x 1050 widescreen can be had here in AU for about 300
bucks. This would solve my problem. I still think we should have the
option of not having the Nav Panel always on top in design view.

[Larry Linson]

"Tom van Stiphout" <wrote

I'm not a fan of maximized either, but you probably
would agree that with the new tabbed interface it's
not as much a problem anymore as it used to be.

The theory of UI relativity? <GRIN>

I often want to be able to look at part of another window along with the
current one, even if the original developer didn't think that was
necessary... so perhaps "not as much a problem", but IMNSHO "still a
problem".

It irritates me when developers (and power users, for that matter) who know
what they are doing are prevented, or it is made more difficult to do it,
because the designers, at the time they made the UI decision, were only
considering casual or novice users -- and their "solution" made it hard for
anyone to get around their "managed" whatever (code/UI/???) no matter how
knowledgeable the user/developer happens to be.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP